


Metamorphosis

by squick



Category: Original Work
Genre: Coming of Age, Fae & Fairies, Introspection, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Universe, POV First Person, theyre basically butterflies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:47:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24414577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squick/pseuds/squick
Summary: Nobody remembers when they're born, do they? That's not so strange.But faeries largely do not remember growing up.
Kudos: 2





	Metamorphosis

Though everyone tries to claim otherwise, I am certain that nobody remembers when I was born. And I’m not bitter - that’s just the nature of things here. We are born and hatched in batches, without identities, without identifiers, and when we emerge, we are not at all the same as we had been. It’s improbable that anyone would remember your birth. Lylia is the only one that I am inclined to believe.

When faeries are lain, they are lain in great numbers, and kept altogether in a cool, dry place, with a big window allowing for plenty of sunlight. The eggs are checked on and moved about multiple times a day, so that the nurses are always aware of any new hatchlings. Usually, many of us hatch in quick succession, on the same day, within the same week. The hatchlings are immediately scooped up and fed, then dropped off in the nursery.

We don’t have arms or legs yet at that age, so we depend on the nurses for everything. Aside from couplings, there is no real concept of a central family; we don’t have mothers and fathers. We have nurses. Nurses are kind, but they cannot be expected to remember the hundreds of us all. At best, we could be color coded by our bodies, or our stripes; we could be categorized by the color blankets that we were wrapped in on our first days. But we do not have names.

Lylia says that she remembers me, because I crawled quite strangely. She said that where the other hatchlings shuffled and squirmed, I would lift up as high as I could, and try to toss myself a great distance in the direction of my choosing. She said that I would tower over my siblings, and crash into them suddenly, filling the nursery with the wailings of whoever I’d crushed beneath me. She said that I was prone to disappearances the second I was out of her sight. She’d found me outside countless times, on the balconies, on the roof even, once. She said that, even though nurses were not meant to, she had grown a bit attached.

She said that when we chrysalized, she memorized the lines of my pod. She’d spend all her free time standing before me, encased in goop and a sheer film, committing my chrysalis to memory. She’d read to me, sing to me, and tell me all about her day while I stood, motionless, growing. 

She emphasizes that none of this made me special. None of this, she is sure, was indicative of my future. I was just another hatchling, after all. In fact, she always ends the story with this joke, maybe she got it all wrong. Maybe that wasn’t even me.

I know that this is a possibility. But, I like to think that she was right all along. I like to think that unlike everyone else, I know who I was. I like to think that I have been remembered: that someone remembered me for me.

Regardless of whoever she had read to before, she was the first person I saw when I emerged. Hers was the first voice that I heard. And she seemed instantly, instinctively, so familiar, that I wanted more than anything to believe that I knew her. 

She was the one that saw my wings.

The next monarch, she jokes. To think, the strange crawler with the big eyes (we all have big eyes) was to be the next monarch.

I remember you, she tells me. I remember when, I remember when,

**Author's Note:**

> so remember how everyone was pissed off when VLD ended the way it did? i got angry and was like "well I'M going to make a fantasy story for younger audiences that has GOOD REPRESENTATION and is FUN" which i, immediately, did not do. but i'm still attached to the characters I made.  
> Fairy Prince is my fav  
> he's got a lot of pressure to deal with


End file.
